U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/277,758, filed Sep. 29, 2009, is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
With the demand for energy contained in biomass such as corn cobs, demand for equipment to harvest the biomass has increased dramatically. This has thus created a need for modifications to equipment that has existed in the marketplace, as well as for completely new equipment. Some of the challenges that must be overcome include the loading, moving, transporting and refining the harvested biomass.
The system of the invention has particular pertinence to the collection of cobs and fodder that is associated with the collection of cobs. This includes shucks (material that wraps around an ear of corn, also known as husks), leaf trash from the corn stalk, as well as the cornstalk.
Particularly with regard to corn, there is a great deal of biomass material other than the corn kernels that has to be handled. When harvesting corn using a combine harvester, the combine takes the ear of corn into the threshing chamber of the combine. Along with the corn one also gathers a high volume of material other than corn ears. Although in past years it has been desirable to leave the material other than the ear of corn outside of the combine, it is now more desirable to collect some of the material collected separate from the grain obtained off of the corn cob. The cobs are thus desired to be collected into a container or collection device that is to be provided in some fashion. It is understood with knowledge of the corn plant that the collection of the cobs requires a much larger collection device than that required for collection of the kernels, which have been easily collected for years. The collection device for the cobs thus must be larger due to the physical size of the cobs. The cobs are generally also a compact part of the corn plant, but are still much larger than the kernels.
With the cobs being compact, they have aerodynamic properties, sufficiently greater mass, and other properties that give them a tendency to be capable of being propelled in an airborne manner, in any of several ways, a greater distance compared to other elements of the biomass, particularly when fed in this manner into a collection device. For instance, shucks or husks, leaf trash, and the like, are not compact, but are of a more paper like consistency, are less aerodynamic, have less mass, and have been found not to travel very well when propelled in the same airborne manner as the cobs. Thus, if it is attempted to propel a mixture of cobs and the other biomass together into a collection device, this creates a very uneven loading within the receiving device. Generally, it has been observed that the higher mass cobs will travel farther within the collection device, and are much easier to distribute. However, when a substantial volume of shucks and leaf trash are added to the cobs the volume of material being collected is much larger. This presents a problem of how to more evenly distribute the mixture of biomass in the collection device, in both the front to back as well as side to side directions. One may address this problem in several ways, e.g., using augers, rakes, and/or other mechanical devices or operations. A shortcoming of this approach, however is that it is costly, and the apparatus is heavy and occupies space that could otherwise be occupied by collected biomass.
Thus, what is sought is a biomass feed system adapted for feeding a desired mixture of biomass, e.g., cobs, husks or shucks, leaf trash, etc., to a collection device, which facilitates even distribution of the biomass within the collection device, and overcomes one or more of the problems and shortcomings set forth above.